ANALYSIS: Moscow claims 592 drones intercepted, Rostov counts a refinery shut down

592

The morning count

Five hundred ninety-two.

On the morning of September 25, Russia’s Defence Ministry publishes its overnight count. Between 8 p.m. on the 24th and 8 a.m. on the 25th, Moscow time, its air defences intercepted and destroyed 592 Ukrainian drones, it claims.

A little earlier, on his own channel, the governor of the Rostov region, Yuri Slyusar, wrote something else. The Novoshakhtinsk refinery was damaged. No casualties. The company suspended production. He added one word: temporarily.

That word will come back.

A night with a sound

Beneath those two messages lies an ordinary night in southern Russia. An engine passing too low. Air defence answering. Windowpanes shaking in their frames. Then a silence you listen to without moving.

About 50 drones shot down over the region, according to the governor. In Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, in Novoshakhtinsk, in six districts.

The ministry adds up. The governor observes.

They are talking about the same night. They aren’t telling the same story.

A number for the night, a word for the morning.

Nineteen territories, one list

The ministry’s geography

The ministry’s message is first of all a list.

Thirteen regions, from Belgorod to Smolensk. The Moscow region. The Krasnodar and Perm territories. Udmurtia, Tatarstan, occupied Crimea. The waters of the Black Sea.

Rostov is on it. So is Perm.

So the ministry claims interceptions over the two regions where two governors admitted, that same night, that a facility had been hit.

It names no refinery. No plant. No fire.

The Ulyanovsk region isn’t on the list. Yet its governor reported eight injured that night, according to Meduza.

One every 73 seconds

Twelve hours. 592 drones. Taking the ministry at its word, that’s one aircraft intercepted roughly every 73 seconds, from evening until morning.

It specifies that these were fixed-wing drones. Long-range aircraft. The kind that fly for hours before arriving. The day before, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., it claimed 34.

The number has no range. No rounding. No margin.

The Rostov governor writes about fifty.

A ministry that counts down to the last unit, at night, over 19 territories and a sea…

A number without a range is already an argument.

What 592 leaves out

Five silences

The number doesn’t say how many drones left Ukraine.

The number doesn’t say how many got through.

The number doesn’t say what targets they were after.

It doesn’t say that a refinery in the Rostov region stopped producing.

It doesn’t say that one person died in the Perm region.

It says one thing only: the Russian sky held.

The Rostov governor’s message, posted more than an hour earlier, had already said the opposite.

A governor against a ministry

I’ll say it now, so the reading stays fair.

I stand with Kyiv and its strikes on Russian refineries. Against the count Russia’s Defence Ministry published on September 25. Because that morning, a Russian governor wrote himself that Novoshakhtinsk had stopped producing.

This isn’t a matter of sympathy. It’s a matter of documents. There are three. Anyone can reread them: the Ukrainian General Staff’s message, the ministry’s count, the governor’s sentence.

Readers who think otherwise have the same exhibits. Let them reread them.

592 intercepted, and the refinery stops anyway.

The ministry counts what falls. Rostov counts what stops.

Perm, 1,450 kilometres away

Thirteen million tonnes

Perm sits at the foot of the Urals. About 1,450 kilometres separate it from the Ukrainian border, according to the Kyiv Independent. Nearly three times Montreal to Toronto, as the crow flies.

Ukraine’s General Staff claims a strike there on the Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez refinery. A fire at the site, it writes.

Capacity, by its account: about 13 million tonnes of oil a year. The plant reportedly supplies fuel and lubricants to the Russian armed forces.

That’s its version. It explains the choice of target. It doesn’t measure the damage.

Already hit in September

According to Bloomberg, the Perm refinery had already been attacked by drones earlier in the month. This time, NASA satellite imagery shows thermal anomalies in an industrial zone.

The territory’s governor, Dmitry Makhonin, speaks of an industrial facility being hit. He insists, The Moscow Times reports, that pollution remains below thresholds and that nearby residents face no threat.

He doesn’t name the plant.

And yet Meduza and The Moscow Times name it: it’s Lukoil’s.

At 1,450 kilometres, there is no rear anymore.

Novoshakhtinsk, again

August 25, then September 25

Novoshakhtinsk lies about 200 kilometres from the border, according to the Kyiv Independent. Right next door, on the scale of this war.

On August 25, a drone strike had already shut down its refinery, according to Militarnyi. Meduza counts two attacks that month, on the 21st and the 25th, and fires that burned for several days.

On September 25, the same refinery stops again.

One month, to the day.

August 25. September 25. October 25?

It’s the region’s only refinery, and one of southern Russia’s major fuel suppliers, Meduza writes. Ukraine’s General Staff credits it with 7.5 million tonnes a year. Meduza says 5.6. Bloomberg puts it at about 110,000 barrels a day.

The range is wide. It changes nothing essential: the plant stopped.

Two radars as well

Near Novoshakhtinsk, the General Staff also claims two radar stations: a 64L6 Gamma-S1 and a 39N6 Kasta-2E2.

The governor says nothing about them. Neither does the ministry.

If those radars were hit, that’s fewer eyes for the next night. And fewer interceptions to count.

One month to the day, and it starts over.

Thirty litres at the pump

One refinery every three days

Perm and Novoshakhtinsk aren’t exceptions. They are a series.

On September 17, the International Energy Agency, the IEA, wrote that over the first eight months of 2026, a Russian refinery had been hit on average every three days.

Of 32 major refineries, only five remained untouched at the end of August, according to the agency. All in Eastern Siberia or the Far East. Between 3,500 and 6,500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

Perm is at 1,450.

To cope, Moscow has reopened the door to older gasoline standards, until July 1, 2027. Higher-sulphur gasoline, allowed for the first time since 2016, the agency notes.

Three regions, three rationing rules

On September 23, The Moscow Times tallied the return of purchase limits.

In the Leningrad region, 30 litres per vehicle, at least until October 1. In the Kaluga region, even plates one day, odd plates the next, and no more jerry cans. In the Zabaykalsky region, 15 litres.

Fifteen litres. A third of a tank.

Nearly one independent station in five has suspended sales around Saint Petersburg, the paper adds.

Gasoline is up 21% since January, according to the same article.

The driver in Kaluga didn’t decide on this war. He pays part of it at the pump. The Kremlin decided on it.

The Kremlin’s war is also paid for by the litre.

What Kyiv doesn’t publish

The other silence

An honest reading of September 25 also looks at the other message.

Ukraine’s General Staff stays silent on three points. It doesn’t say how many drones it launched. It doesn’t say how many reached their targets. It doesn’t say how many went down along the way.

The Kyiv Independent notes that it could not immediately verify those details.

How many aircraft left Ukraine that night?

Nobody has written it down.

That silence isn’t the equivalent of the other one. A country under attack that strikes the fuel plants of the army invading it doesn’t hand its inventory to the enemy. A ministry that publishes a total for its own public claims, for its part, to have counted everything.

Article 51

Kyiv invokes Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, the inherent right of self-defence. The strikes target Russia’s military-economic potential, the General Staff says.

Zelensky, on his channel, calls these strikes long-range sanctions.

The phrase is accurate on one point. A sanction is measured in lost output. Not in drones shot down.

Both armies withhold a number. Only one loses a refinery.

What comes back online

The August refinery restarted

Now, what cuts against my side.

Novoshakhtinsk, shut down on August 25, had to be hit again on September 25. So it had resumed production in between.

Perm, targeted earlier in the month according to Bloomberg, was hit again.

The IEA notes that some Russian refineries have been struck up to 15 times since 2022. They restart. They go down. They restart again.

So the Rostov governor is right on one point. Temporarily. The word wasn’t a dodge. It was a description.

Fifty over Rostov

He also writes that about 50 drones were shot down over his region, for one refinery hit. If his numbers hold, most of the aircraft sent toward the region fell before reaching their target.

That’s true, and it’s costly. These strikes burn through a lot of drones for a few weeks of shutdown. They don’t erase a refinery. They put it on pause.

And that doesn’t overturn the argument. A pause repeated every month is how you wear down a war economy.

Temporarily, but every month.

Paris proposes a truce

The September 24 double moratorium

The most serious objection doesn’t come from Moscow. It comes from an ally, and it starts from that concession.

On September 24, on the 8 p.m. news on TF1 and France 2, Emmanuel Macron proposes a double moratorium. Kyiv would stop striking Russian refineries. Moscow would commit to sparing Ukraine’s energy system and civilian infrastructure. Fighting in the Black Sea would stop. That’s what BFMTV and Le Parisien report.

He says he discussed it with Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The truce Washington is pushing

Bloomberg adds that Zelensky and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov each met with the American administration in New York. Washington is pushing both capitals toward a truce on energy assets.

In its strongest form, the argument stands up. A shut refinery restarts in a few weeks. A power grid hit in winter leaves entire buildings in the cold. Trading one for the other would protect Ukrainian civilians before the freeze.

The idea isn’t absurd. It’s serious. It deserves better than a shrug.

This is the objection that has to be turned around. Not brushed aside.

The objection comes from an ally. It demands proof.

592, an asking price

The export ban

Here is what turns it around.

According to Bloomberg, the loss of supply forced Russia to temporarily ban most of its exports of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

The Moscow Times’ Russian service, citing Reuters and the International Energy Agency, counts seven refineries shut in September and refining capacity cut by about a third.

In June, the IEA measured Russian refining down to 3.8 million barrels a day. The lowest in more than 20 years.

A country whose sky holds doesn’t ration its gasoline.

And yet on September 25, the ministry writes 592 as if the sky were sealed.

What the count is worth

The real question lies elsewhere. An energy truce is an exchange. In an exchange, each side sets the price of what it gives up.

If the strikes cost nothing, as the count implies, Moscow has nothing to pay to make them stop. If they cost an export ban, the price changes.

Everything suggests that 592 is also meant for the people at the negotiating table.

The double moratorium exists only because refineries are stopping. No strikes, nothing to trade.

592 isn’t a toll. It’s a price quote.

One dead in the Perm region

What the governor says

In the Perm region, there is one dead.

Governor Dmitry Makhonin announced it. Meduza and The Moscow Times link the death to the strike on the Lukoil refinery.

The pages I read give neither a name, nor an age, nor what brought this person there that night.

What nobody counts

The ministry counts the drones. The ministry counts the regions. The ministry counts the hours, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

It doesn’t count the dead.

Neither does Ukraine’s General Staff. Its message says fire, refinery, capacity. It doesn’t mention the person.

I won’t look away. It was a strike by my side, and someone didn’t make it home.

Responsibility has an address. It was the Kremlin that launched this war of aggression, and it is the Kremlin, according to Kyiv, that puts this refinery to work for its army.

A ministry that publishes 592 and says nothing of a death is telling its country what to remember.

The drones get a number. The dead get one governor’s line.

The numbers nobody publishes

Launched, downed, through

I don’t know how many drones were launched.

I don’t know how many fell in fields, on roofs, on roads.

I don’t know how long Novoshakhtinsk will stay down this time.

I can’t say whether the two radars were destroyed or only damaged.

Nor can I say what Moscow would put on the table to make the strikes stop.

Nobody publishes it.

I know one thing. A Russian governor wrote temporarily. It isn’t much. It’s still more than the ministry.

The fatigue of mornings

I’ll admit it: these dawn tallies wear me out. Every morning, a new number. Copied before the first coffee. Forgotten by noon.

And yet the work starts right there, in what the number leaves out.

Doubt isn’t a pose. It’s work.

The coming winter

What’s already on the table

Here is what’s coming, and we already know it.

Ukraine’s General Staff ended its September 25 message with a two-word promise. More coming.

An energy truce is circulating in New York. Paris backs it. The American administration pushes it. Moscow publishes 592.

Pushing a truce isn’t a bad move in itself. If it protects Ukraine’s power grid before the freeze, it’s even a good one. The bad move would be signing it at the ministry’s price.

Refining and the cold

The calendar doesn’t wait. October is coming. Then the first frost.

Two clocks are running. The refineries’ clock, which restarts within a month. The winters’ clock, which doesn’t.

Cold, in an unheated apartment, hits the hands first. Then sleep.

And yet the second clock is the one Kyiv could buy with the first. That’s what the moratorium is really about.

Signed at the price of 592, a truce would have Kyiv give up real leverage for a promise.

A refinery restarts. A winter doesn’t.

The price of an idle refinery

Two documents

At the end of the night of September 25, two documents remain.

A ministry that writes 592. A governor who writes temporarily.

The first is meant to say nothing got through. The second admits that something stopped.

One is tidy. The other is true.

A moratorium, too, is only temporary, with more signatures on it.

Which count to choose

On the day the capitals set the price of an energy truce, which count will they agree to read?

The ministry’s, or the sentence from Rostov.

Tomorrow morning, another number will drop at the same hour.

Moscow will count again. Refineries will stop again.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine — strikes on the Perm and Novoshakhtinsk refineries, September 25, 2026
• Russian Defence Ministry — 592 drones claimed as intercepted, September 25, 2026
• Governor of the Rostov region — Novoshakhtinsk refinery damaged and halted, September 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• The Kyiv Independent — Perm, 1,450 km from the border, September 25, 2026
• Meduza — 592 drones claimed and one dead in the Perm region, September 25, 2026
• Bloomberg via ThePrint — Novoshakhtinsk halted and the energy truce, September 25, 2026